


Where You Need Me

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Childhood, Fluff, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Ignis was right where Noctis needed him to be.





	Where You Need Me

When Noctis returned from Tenebrae, quiet and injured and scared, Ignis hadn’t been sure what to do. He was just a child in the Citadel, used to watching the rush of the adults around him, following in their footsteps, at their heels. He was used to following the orders, to being given orders, despite spending most of his time at the prince’s side. 

He watched the steady stream of adults— doctors, Guards, Glaives, the King’s retinue and friends— come and go from from the shadows of the prince’s room. From the quiet space by the desk where he was sat with the day’s lessons and the new book he had been given. He thought of how Noctis would have loved the attention before he left. Would have smiled at each new question and prodding and little chat. He thought of how Noctis wouldn’t be crying like he was now, curling away from the endless flow of doctors and nurses and clinging to his father when he could. 

The Noctis who returned was smaller than Ignis remembered. 

He almost doubted that it was his Noctis at all. 

At dinner, when the King was forced to leave the bedside of his son, no one came to collect Ignis. No one paid him any mind as he approached the edge of the bed where the prince was finally resting, a little green figuring clutched tightly in his hand. 

There, at the side of the bed, Ignis tried to understand what had happened. No one had told him. But he had heard of the daemons out on the roads, and the Niflheim attacks in Tenebrae. He had heard of the long recovery and the grievous injury. Even if no one wanted him to hear about those things really. The rumours still spread around the Citadel. 

All he did was listen. 

It was hard to see Noctis in the scared boy who came back. 

“Iggy?”

It was hard to hear Noctis in the quiet voice, rough with the protests at the attention all day, and the crying, and fear. 

“Welcome home, Highness.”

Ignis smiled when he saw those big eyes, still wet with tears. In that sylleblossom blue— despite the fear and confusion and pain that lingered from the eventful day— Ignis saw his friend. He took the small hand that was reaching for his own. 

Between them, Ignis knew that he had always been the quiet one. The obedient one. The shadow that trailed after the sunny disposition of the Lucian prince. 

“Stay, Iggy? Please?”

“Of course, Highness.” At the little smile, Ignis resolved to stay as close and as long as the prince allowed. “Let me just get my book.”

When he returned to the bed, Noctis had already made room for him. Had already resettled so he could curl close and look at whatever it was Ignis was reading. 

Ignis woke when the King returned to the bedside, and he struggled to dislodge the prince curled against him, clinging to him. At a raised hand from King Regis, Ignis stilled and blushed, resettling quietly with the prince. With his friend. 

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your own bed, Ignis?”

The book lay open at their feet, the little figure Noctis had held so tightly on its open pages. Ignis steeled himself and met the kindness in the King’s eyes with all the determination of a knight from the stories he read to Noctis. “I’m sorry to disagree, Your Majesty, but Noctis needs me more here.”

Years later, Ignis would feel Noct curl against him the same way again. He would hear the ocean beating against the stones of a ruined city, and taste the salt in the air despite the fresh rains that still persisted here and there. He would hold Noctis close, in a way he hadn’t known how to when they were little, when Noct was small and scared and clinging to fairytales to help him sleep. 

Years later, he would be held by Noct. Stronger now than when they were young. As they both described the world crumbling around them and the fears they had faced in the Leviathan’s maelstrom, he would brush his thumb across Noct’s cheeks and pretend the dampness there wasn’t for him. That it wasn’t because there were still sacrifices to make. 

“I’m okay, Noctis. I’m okay.” 

He would smile and kiss the same path his thumb travelled and see only those big, wondrous eyes he had fallen in love with at so early an age in his mind. That particular blue that reminded him of forest flowers and a home he would never see again. Of the kindness that had once drawn him in, with two small hands gripping his own in greeting. 

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with the bed to yourself?” Ignis would ask when Noct was curled against him, and he could let his hands wander the warm expanse of familiar skin pressed close. When Noct had indulged his desire to see his prince again, as best he could. 

“No. Unless you don’t want to stay?” 

Years later, Ignis would hear hesitation in his prince’s voice, and have the courage to chase it away wish kisses and touches, and promises. “I’m sorry to disagree, my dear, but I’m right where you need me. And where I want to be.”


End file.
